Stuff That Grinds My Gears: What’s Been Pissing Me Off Lately

Over the past few weeks, there have been two issues that really chapped my ass. I’ve been trying to just let them go, but then I realized I’m a blogger; it’s my non-paying job to bitch about stuff. So, here it goes…

1) The Bobby Petrino Situation

The guy is a scumbag, pure and simple. But Arkansas got what they deserved, and the only person I’ve seen say that is the guy over at Klown Times.

Keep in mind that (Arkansas athletic director Kevin) Long is the same AD who hired Petrino away from the Atlanta Falcons DURING THEIR SEASON. If that wasn’t bad enough, Long did so without asking permission to speak to Petrino.

Plus, I find it hard to believe that Long did not know of Petrino’s past transgressions. After all, this is the same Petrino who secretly flirted with Auburn while former coach Tommy Tuberville was still employed there. And of course there was that Atlanta Falcons “thing.”

Let’s take Klown’s position as a starting point. I’ve always had a sort of “three strikes” rule when it comes to forming opinions, and this latest incident with Petrino was clearly worthy of ringing him up as a complete dick…100%, USDA Prime, Grade A Tube Steak.

Look at the Auburn situation. You know what kind of guy flies into town secretly to discuss ripping a job out from under another coach? The same kind of guy who pretends to be your best friend, then bangs your wife the minute you are out of town on business. Not to mention, this tells you a lot about how much this guy values loyalty. He was perfectly fine not only with leaving town unannounced in the middle of the night, he was willing to sneak in the back door at his secret destination. I understand that valuing loyalty in college sports is like cornering the sunscreen market in Alaska in January, but at some point you simply cannot advertise you are willing to stab anybody in the back at anytime; karma can be a real bitch. We’ll come back to that point later.

St-eeee-rike One.

Then, there’s what happened with the Falcons. The way that situation ended in Atlanta could have been a 500-level class in douchebaggery. Not only did Petrino actively seek to bail the minute things got tough mid-way through a failed season, he secretly campaigned for the Arkansas job while then-Hawg head coach Houston Nutt was embroiled in his own scandal, and when Bobby-Boy got the job in Fayetteville, he informed the Falcons of his mid-season departure with a letter. The Falcons, and their owner Arthur Blank made a huge commitment to Petrino on the assumption he would be the big-time coach to make the transition from college to the NFL. Fat chance; instead the Falcons realized the hard way they had married their future to a guy who couldn’t wait to skip town the minute a greener pasture presented itself. Perhaps if Arthur Blank had paid Petrino in 25-year old motorcycle riding suck-sluts…

As much as the douchiness already oozes out of this issue, there’s two things that really pissed me off here. First of all, there’s the people who thought Petrino shouldn’t have been fired. Tell that to Houston Nutt. For those of you who may not recall, Nutt got himself run out of Fayetteville for some extra-marital cannubial bliss. To make a long story short, Nutt’s relationship with local news anchor Donna Bragg hit the public arena when a fan who was angry with the Nutt filed a Freedom of Information Act requesting Nutt’s email and phone records, at which point he exposed his carnal canoodling with Bragg.

Of course, this led to Nutt’s firing, not for his won-loss record, but for his extra-curricular activity. I will admit I’m a fan of the Nutt, if for no other reason as he makes wonderful blog-fodder. But this is more about the potential headache Arkansas could have faced. If the university had not fired Petrino, the Nutt could have excoriated the Arkansas administration, especially since Petrino upped the ante over what the Nutt did by a) messing with a University employee who b) Petrino got on the payroll nad c) tried to cover up the motorcycle accident, up to and including trying not to call 911 to aid his injured mistress, which led to d) the filing of a false report on the incident to university administration.

Speaking of coaches who have no love for Petrino, do you wonder what Tommy Tuberville thought of all this? Sure, now Tuberville has his own issues to deal with at Texas Tech, but don’t forget that Tuberville hired Petrino at Auburn to run his offense. In a move of complete foreshadowing, Petrino stair-stepped that experience into the head coaching job at Louisville, the very same job from which Petrino then tried to secretly steal Tuberville’s gig at Auburn. Here comes that karma thing again…

St-eeee-rike Two.

As far as strike three goes, we’ve really already alluded to it. Honestly it isn’t about who Petrino was sticking his wang into; it’s about all the rules and decencies he broke to get into the pants of a woman was half his age. We all know that story now, and while it is clearly a good reason to punch Petrino out (in more ways than the baseball reference implies), let’s just for fun say Petrino got a piece of it; foul tip and all that…we’re still at strike two.

Then read this.

Hark back to his days at Louisville, where the story of how Petrino of how he handled an incident with a player named D.J. Kamer incident, which while it was hushed up at the time, is nothing short of appaling. Kamer had a friend pass away, and according to theNew York Times, Petrino said that Kamer didn’t “want to play football (at Louisville)” if he attended his childhood friends funeral as a pallbearer. And in what is proving to be a theme with Petrino, that very same report in the New York Times quotes former Atlanta Falcons player Lawyer Milloy said “That’s karma…Just because he knows X’s and O’s doesn’t mean he is a nice person.”

St-eeee-rike Three. Grab some bench, Bobby…you are out.

As far as blog-fodder is concerned, here’s a classic bit from the Dubsism archives about Bobby Petrino, Houston Nutt, Tommy Tuberville, and the classic Vietnam War story…

2) The Overblown Ozzie Guillen “Controversy”

I really don’t know where to start with this one. I don’t know for whom I have the most invective for in this case. It could be the douchebags in the media who asked the outspoken Guillen a loaded question when they knew both the answer he would give and how they would attempt to explode the statements of a baseball manager into some sort of geo-political catastrophe. It could be the dumb-asses who stood in front of the Marlins’ ball-park acting as if Guillen’s statement about the murderous scumwad known as Fidel Castro had somehow been responsible for all the misery caused throughout the annals of human history. Hell, it could also be the people who acted as if this was the worst thing that could ever happen, then completely lost interest as quickly as they became so righteously indignant.

Let’s start from the top.

First of all, it is a sad state of affairs when I have to agree with that pompous bag of anal leakage known as Bill Maher. But his defense of Guillen, while done for reasons ideologically different from my own, is still nonetheless correct.

“If you say something Communists don’t like, they take away your job and send you to a re-education camp until you come out with the one approved opinion,” Maher said sarcastically. “We wouldn’t want that here in America.”

Granted, the blood of tens of thousands of innocent people is on Castro’s hands. If I were in Cuba and made the anti-Castro comments I’m making here, you can bet your beard and cigar my ass would be in a cell in no time. That’s what dictators do. But in America, the press has the right to ask a loaded, pre-meditated, and/or albeit pointless question, much like Guillen has the right to answer it even if it means sticking both feet in his mouth up to the ankles.

Am I the only person who was reminded of the Marge Schott incident? For those of you who don’t recall, Schott was sand-bagged by ESPN’s Sal Paolantonio when she made some pro-Hitler comments. For this she was run out of baseball, despite the fact that all she did was answer a question. If you read the transcript of the interview, two things should leap off the screen at you. First, what she said was hardly a ringing endorsement of Hitler, and second, you should find it curious that the exact wording of Paolantonio’s question is missing.

Here’s why that matters…if you are going to ask an out-spoken person like Schott or Guillen such loaded questions, aren’t you doing so EXACTLY to illicit such a quote you as a journalist can use to gin up a tempest on a keyboard? Doesn’t that then mean that the very same journalists who are fanning the flames of indignation are doing so while hiding their matches and gasoline cans?

Then, there’s the people who were so whipped up over all of this? This whole thing dripped with so much hypocrisy; people who don’t even go to Marlins games threatening boycotts unless Guillen was fired, yet they were noticeably absent when Guillen returned from his suspension. Oh, that’s right, they weren’t going to show up anyway. Not to mention, many of these Cubans who were supposedly so upset by Guillen’s comments are the very same who have done nothing to help those people still stuck under Castro’s thumb. I understand this in no way applies to all Cubans, but there is a sizable portion of that community who have taken a decided “I got mine, you get yours” attitude towards those still in Cuba. If you want to create change, you have to do more than show up for three hours with a cardboard sign.

Not to mention, there’s nothing quite like the supreme assholery of those who are so quick to label something “unforgivable.” Guess what, you sign-waving dipshit? It is your very intolerance upon which dictatorships like the abhorrent one of Castro are built; the soul of tyranny is the stamping out of that which is deemed arbitrarily to be “unfavorable.”

Now, for the most important question. Why does anybody give a frog’s fat ass about what Ozzie Guillen thinks? He’s a baseball manager, and that’s all he is. He’s not the President, a Governor, or any sort of politician or government leader. He’s not an ambassador to the United Nations, he’s not even an over-paid entertainer who gets away with saying stupid shit on a daily basis. But like those entertainers, his words carry no weight, so outside of baseball there is no reason to give a damn about anything he says. One of the items in the Bill of Rights is the right to free speech; which is why one thing that isn’t there is the right not to be offended. There’s lots of truly offensive things in the world, and if you get your hackles up over the ramblings of a half-wit baseball manager, you really need to get out of the house more often.

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Excellent breakdown of the Petrino thing. He hardly seems sorry for anything.

As for the Guillen thing, this world has now been created where journalist will always ask these types of questions to the “ticking timebomb” sort of dudes like Ozzie. And it’s hard to blame them, because if it gets blown out of proportion then the number of Google searches for their name will skyrocket.

And this is another thing I’d like to know…all of these protesters…where do they work? Do they skip work to do this shit? OK, so let’s say they don’t…does that mean they enjoy spending their free time making signs and complaining about something they will never be able to change? And do they honestly believe it will work? I felt the same way about all of this when the Occupy Wall Street thing happened. Yeah, it sucks that the banks did all that, but shouldn’t you be somewhere?

When did “activism” become “just standing there with a fucking poster”?

Question: When did “activism” become “just standing there with a fucking poster”?

Answer: In the 1960’s. See, the last time we had a group of people willing to put their asses on the line for something they believed in were the Civil Rights people, which is why they were successful. In contrast, look at all the “flower children” who protested the Vietnam War a few years later. All they did was make signs, recite quasi-clever chants, and occupy college administration buildings, all of which were completely ineffective.

However the dirty little secret is that those tactics were never intended to work, they existed only to make these “protestors” feel like they were doing something without actually having to put the money where their mouths were. Despite all their shows of symbolism, there was no such thing as a sign-waver who didn’t sleep in his own bed that night, probably after cannon-balling a bunch of cheap wine and bong hits, all while being completely self-congratualatory.

Worse yet, it’s the “flower power” generation that runs this country now, which is the main reason we’ve become a nation of gutless pussies. Even people who now take up “causes” in this country take up the ones that are easiest to take up. The next time you see somebody wearing on of those pink ribbons showing the whole world they are against breast cancer, ask them where the pro-cancer people are? And here’s the best part…now, you don’t even have to make a sign; we have too many people who think they can make a difference by putting some shit on their Facebook pages or wearing some sort of ribbon.

For the record, I have simply presented the case as to why Moyer’s career numbers may or may not be worthy of Cooperstown. Moyer is really a lot like the Cal Ripken of pitchers; he has some interesting career number which are largely a product of sheer longevity. To be honest, I’m on the record as saying Ripken is the most over-rated player in the history of baseball, but Moyer’s is going to end up north of 270 wins in an era win guys with less than 250 are getting consideration…